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Thursday, 15 March 2012

I think this is becoming an emergency in Nigeria and
it requires we begin to focus on the menace of unconscionable, unscrupulous and
merciless confidence tricksters preying on the vulnerable sectors of our
society.

Last year, somebody called my mother informing her of
my being in trouble abroad and convincingly persuaded her to part with some
money. Having tricked her the first time, they applied more pressure at which
time she chatted to my siblings who were able to break her out of the spell she
had fallen under and stop the criminal activity.

Using my blog, I tried to create a storm and though we
never apprehended the nasty piece of work, the bank at least got involved
enough for about 3 weeks trying to get hold of the person who for the pressure
and bad publicity that had gone out regarding his identity was forced to go to
ground.

My mother’s situation was not an exception, the fact
is our once strong, able parents are now older and less agile in terms of
things in their daily lives, there are people out there ready to create
situations of distress, panic, anxiety or fear and by doing so getting our now
vulnerable and sometimes lonely parents to part with their life’s savings.

Abductions and
hypnoses

I heard today of another case where a fine and
wonderful lady in her 70s had gone to withdraw some cash from a bank and as she
left the bank, she was accosted by persons who abducted her and took her to
some place she can no more recollect.

It is very possible she was hypnotised because she
gave them the money she had withdrawn and then she was dropped off at home
where the next day under some sort of influence she returned to the bank to
withdraw 5 times what she withdrew before and handed it over to the gang.

At the end of the second day, she apparently came to
and informed her daughter of what had happened but swore her daughter to
secrecy about informing other siblings. Meanwhile the gang was trying again to
get her to withdraw more money for them and thankfully to no avail.

Tackling the
issue

At first one has to be thankful that she came to no
physical harm but the mental anguish and scars of such an encounter will no
doubt be more lasting. She is not as chatty as she used to be and she rarely
leave her home; this is a lady who has travelled the world has been fiercely
independent apart from the fact that she had been widowed for over 3 decades.

I do not think the case of my mother and that of this
amazing lady are unique, I have the feeling it is happening a lot but the
victims are not talking or telling anyone for the embarrassment, the shame or
the realisation that they are a lot more vulnerable than they are ready to let
on.

Banks must
profile

Banks are usually the centres of this corrupt enterprise
because that is where the money is with people being cajoled, blackmail,
shaken-down or rustled. They need to be aware that people are targeting their
customers usually gaining information about accounts or other pertinent details
that will not draw suspicion to criminal activity preying on the vulnerability
of the elderly.

Besides, I think banks have a greater duty of care and
concern towards these vulnerable sections of society and it is important that
they adopt measures that are sympathetic and cognisant of withdrawal patterns
of these people – such as alerts to successive withdrawals of large sums of
money, facilitation of wired transfers rather than the handling of large sums
of cash and advising that senior citizens for their good be better accompanied
to and from the banks.

They need to create better profiles of their customers
of a certain age, install triggers to alert to unusual activity and have better
levels of customer care and challenge/response scenarios to help their
customers safeguard their wealth especially when things are somewhat out of the
person’s control.

Any other ideas you might have towards helping our
parents evade these crooks will be welcome and please post them as comments.